The Army plans to put its aviation modernization programs on life support to pay for readiness, spending just enough to preserve rotorcraft production and avoid default on contractual obligations.
Total spending on procurement was cut $1.3 billion from a total $16.4 in the current fiscal year to $15.1 billion in the Army’s fiscal 2017 request. Aviation procurement bore the brunt. It fell a total $2.3 billion while spending on all other items–missiles, combat vehicles, ammunition and other equipment–increased.
Photo: Boeing
Aviation accounts for a quarter of the Army’s total procurement budget and therefore was a juicy target for trimming cost, said Maj. Gen. Thomas Horlander. The Army prioritized readiness to combat current threats over modernization in its budget, and therefore inflated its operations and maintenance budget at the expense of procurement, research and development, personnel and construction.
“That is a big portfolio that holds a lot of dollars,” Horlander said of the aviation budget during a roundtable with reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon.
The Army requested $3.9 billion for new aircraft–including overseas contingency operations funding–in fiscal 2017, down from $6 billion in the current fiscal year. The absence of congressional add-ons in the current budget and the closure of two procurement programs accounts for some but not all of the difference. A small portion of the decrease was programmed in as part of the Aviation Restructure Initiative (ARI).
In the current fiscal year, the Army was granted a boost by Congress to buy replacements for aircraft lost or damaged in Afghanistan. Procurement of the Airbus UH-72 Lakota utility helicopter and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle also end in the current fiscal year. The Army spent $187 million on Lakotas in the current fiscal year and $270 million on the Gray Eagle. It budgeted only $55 million for the Gray Eagle in 2017 and nothing for the Lakota.
Aviation seems to have borne the brunt of budget cuts but remains a modernization priority and the largest proportional element of the service’s procurement spending, said Maj. Gen. Keith Thurgood, deputy for acquisition and systems management for the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. New and remanufactured aircraft will simply be bought in smaller batches and take longer to fully field, he said Wednesday.
“Aviation is the large portion of our procurement budget, so that indicated that the priorities didn’t change, but we got smaller,” Thurgood said. “We just execute [MYP contracts] on a different timeline.”
The Army buys all of its primary rotorcraft on multi-year contracts that it is loath to break because buying in bulk saves money and allows industry to plan for its production lines to remain open for a foreseeable period.
“We don’t want to break those multi-year contracts because that represents industrial base, it represents support. It represents jobs. It also represents the need for the Army to have these assets in the battlespace,” Thurgood said.
Existing MYP contracts for the Boeing [BA] CH-47 Chinook and the Sikorsky [LMT] H-60 Black Hawk helicopters are protected in the 2017 budget request. It also anticipates the approval of the AH-64 Apache MYP contract currently in negotiation.,” Thurgood said.
The Army plans to stretch out its MYP commitments and slow the pace of procurement to the minimum levels necessary to sustain production, Thurgood said. Procurement quantities of all three airframes are down significantly in the 2017 budget request.
Orders for remanufactured AH-64E Apaches fell from 64 in the current fiscal year to 48 in fiscal 2017. Chinook purchases likewise fell from 39 to 22 in the 2017 request. The Black Hawk took the biggest hit, falling to 36 airframes ordered in the 2017 budget from 107 purchased in the current fiscal year.
A total $1 billion will procure 52 remanufactured E-model Apache Block 3 aircraft, four of which are funded through the Overseas Contingency Operations account.
The budget request includes $923 million for 21 Sikorsky UH-60M for the active component and 15 HH-60M helicopters, 11 of which are for the National Guard. That is down from $1.7 billion enacted funding for H-60 procurement in 2016.
Multi-year procurement of the CH-47 was halved from $1 billion in fiscal 2016 to $556 million in the 2017 request. Chinook advanced procurement dollars likewise fell from $99 million to $9 million.
Another $668 million will further the Army’s effort to have a fleet entirely of F-model Chinooks. That amount pays for 22 remanufactured CH-47 airframes and modifications to existing aircraft.
While the Army aims to protect and modernize the aviation assets it has within a constrained budget, it also sought to preserve efforts to develop future rotorcraft technologies. Aviation-related research was funded at $732 million
“While you are preserving what we have and modernizing what we have, you also have to preserve the future capability,” Thurgood said.
Atop the list of future technologies is the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), which will be the powerplant for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family of rotorcraft. FVL is a close second and the budget preserves funding for the Joint Multi-Role technology demonstration program and other research efforts that will inform its design.
The 2017 budget request also funds science and technology efforts to develop and field aircraft survivability equipment. The common infrared countermeasures (CIRCM) program is set to enter engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) will integrate the system on Apaches. Another research priority is the brownout rotorcraft system/degraded visual environment system and other technologies to help pilots see in degraded visual environments.